the list: discussion or riff?

[Seb Thirlway]

-----Original Message-----
From: Terrance F. Flaherty <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>

>OK, same books different reading. Lets start from this and
>see if we can have a serious discussion and at the same time
>not fly too far away from the common discussion--grgr. I am
>convinced that the attempt to establish one "true" reading
>of GR or we might say one "true" philosophy by refuting all
>others is a futile exercise.

Hear hear.  I hope I, and everyone else on this list, never reach
a "true" philosophy of GR.
What has struck me is how, since I've started reading all your
posts, I'm finding more in GR I never found before.  If I ever
have this book sussed I won't read it again, which would be a sad
day.

> This is partly due to the fact
>that each person's refutation of all other
>readings/philosophies depends on interpreting others in the
>terms of their own reading/philosophy, and this exposes one
>to the danger of the fallacy known to philosophers as
>IGNORATIO ELENCHI, or ignorance of what refutation is. O
>Rocks Terrance, tell us in plain words. OK, refutation of
>what has not been asserted. Lots of times I post something
>to this list and as others begin to reply my assertions are
>lost. I cannot defend what I have not asserted. Often, the
>discussion evolves and attempts to repair, correct, clarify,
>and so on, only complicate matters

True, and difficult.  One the one hand it would be good to e.g.
read something from Terrance, and then read everyone discussing
it in the terms of the original assertion (which involves, in
this example, giving Terrance a privileged status in the
discussion - to say "that's not what I meant" where necessary).
Can't say I could join in very well but it would be interesting
to read.
On the other hand, the freewheeling that happens, as Terrance
describes it, has a positive side: just as GR is a book with a
million fertile points, any more disciplined discussion,
focussing on a single point that has been made, spawns other
discussions, and in turn these spawn others.  I enjoy reading and
getting involved in this kind of freeform stuff - but not when it
gets to the point of flaming, or accusations of trolling.

. These disagreements,
>based on miscommunication, then often become  part of the
>general discussion and we get fixed in what I think is
>frustrating to many here, in what we might call polarities
>of confused disagreement.

Yep.  Email is notoriously (for me, don't ask) fertile ground for
selective quoting.  Which can start to look like personal attack
"you say in sentence 6 that... this is utterly indefensible".
Where I can imagine Terrance could start getting frustrated,
looking for a chance to say that this is NOT what he meant.
On the other hand GR doesn't help: for me the most wonderful
thing about it is the way TRP continually makes the reader
nervous: any single sentence COULD suddenly become the slender
but effective basis for a manic, extended, exhilarating Pynchon
riff.  You read along, and suddenly BLAM there you are, he's
pulled his trick on you again.  Wonderful.
I think I've tended to use this technique: something Terrance, or
s~z, or anyone writes suddenly makes a whole lot of connections
within GR for me, and I post a riff.  Which no-one has taken
exception to yet.  Perhaps this is what is happening elsewhere -
one sentence leads on to a position where it looks as if the
poster has e.g. a view that child abuse is OK (or to put it more
offensively - that child abuse with the sons/daughters of
everyone on the list who has them would be OK - and then, well,
that is something I would be emotional about).

>No one, I think, is to blame for
>this and I think this is a solvable problem. However, there
>are other problems. Even if we all agreed that any attempt
>to refute all other readings/philosophies different from
>one's own is futile, we still have communications problems.
>These communications problems often involve communication
>across different theoretical frameworks. For example, when
>one person applies a particular approach to GR. We also have
>the problem of how achievements made possible by one
>framework can be incorporated into another. For example, I
>like to apply Brian McHale's work to a Menippean reading of
>GR. Others on the list may apply the achievements of McHale
>or Weisenburger or Freud or Frye or Barth, or Bahktin or
>Bloom and so on,. either to their own reading or to another
>theoretical framework. This is part of the reason why
>"lit-crtit" discussions are often fruitless here. What often
>happens is that we deal with the conclusions of certain
>approaches, for example, Frye's Anatomy, comparing them with
>other conclusions without accounting for the different
>principles on which these approaches depend.
>
Since I'm not familiar with the literature on GR I can't really
join in.  Anyone tells me they're applying an "X-ian" reading to
GR and I'll concede the point.  Can we keep the list enjoyable
for both the academically sophisticated and those who are simply
high on GR and fascinated by it?  Something I'd like to see would
be references of some sort: when someone makes an intriguing
point, based on McX's article YZA, could there be a brief mention
of where this is available - online ideally, though not always
possible?  If there is a consensus out there that everyone has
read secondary literature X and Y and Z, and some people want to
have a discussion on the basis of this common ground, well how
about tolerance for side-threads for those who don't share this
ground?  Some sort of convention in subject headers?

As Terrance points out, there seems to be a lot of covert
fire-power being used "you are totally wrong, based on my
assumptions/reading/approach which I am not going to reveal
explicitly".

hoping to carry on enjoying this find.

merry Christmas to everyone




seb